‖kombuis, noun

/kɔmˈbeɪs//kɔmˈbœɪs/
Forms:
Also combuys.
Plurals:
kombuise/kɔmˈbeɪsə/, kombuisen.
Origin:
Afrikaans, DutchShow more Afrikaans, transferred use of Dutch kombuis galley of a ship (however, in P.G.J. van Sterkenburg’s Een Glossarium van Zeventiende-Eeuws Nederlands (1977), kombuis is glossed as ‘een bijgebouwtje’, an outbuilding).
1.
a. Used before the names of languages, as kombuis-Engels, kombuis-Hollands implying a pidgin variety of that language. See also kitchen noun sense 1 and 2.
1899 W.S. Logeman How to Speak DutchPreface, My friend J.F. van Oordt..has tried to strike the happy medium between ‘High Dutch’, not often understood by the people, and the ‘Kombuis-Hollands’ (Kitchen-Dutch) of the uneducated coloured servants.
1937 C.R. Prance Tante Rebella’s Saga 40Oom Sampson could only speak kombuis-Engels and some High Dutch and the old Cape Dutch.
1971 L.G. Green Taste of S.-Easter 76It has been suggested that the first book printed in Afrikaans (then known as Cape Dutch or Kombuis Hollands) was a pamphlet intended for Malays.
1972 J. Packer Boomerang 24I learn Afrikaans from Lizzie — that’s kombuis Afrikaans — kitchen Afrikaans.
b. comb.
kombuistaal/-tɑːl/ [Afrikaans, taal language], a form of Afrikaans considered non-standard; cf. kitchen Dutch (see kitchen sense 2 b) .
[1958 A. Jackson Trader on Veld 28During my 12 years’ sojourn in the Backveld, I learnt not only to speak but to write the ‘Taal’ fluently, but I must admit that it was the purest Kombuis or Kitchen variety that I knew.]
1986 K. McCormick in Burman & Reynolds Growing Up 293The local dialect of Afrikaans is referred to pejoratively as ‘broken Afrikaans’, ‘not proper Afrikaans’, ‘kombuistaal’ (kitchen language)...Kombuistaal has many loan-words from English and other languages, thus facilitating code-switching.
1989 Weekend Post 9 Dec. (Leisure) 5Koos Kombuis sings about everything from Aids, oppression and hypocrisy to family murders in a ‘kombuistaal’ which is unlikely to find favour in polite company.
1990 S. De Waal in Weekly Mail 23 Feb. 22He is bravely contributing to the unfettered growth of the one-time kombuistaal — he’s helping to take it out of the mouths of ministers of constitutional development..and return it to the kitchen, to the people.
1990 Sunday Times 3 June 4Strangers embraced, danced together and declared undying loyalty in the name of harmony, brotherhood, kombuis taal, the end-conscription campaign — or wherever the next six pack was coming from.
2. A kitchen. Also attributive.
[1913 C. Pettman Africanderisms 274Kombuis, (D. kombuis, kabuis, a nautical term for the cooking place aboard ship; cf. Eng. caboose.) Cape Dutch for the kitchen. The word used in Holland is keuken.]
1921 H.J. Mandelbrote tr. of O.F. Mentzel’s Descr. of Cape of G.H. I. 64We must note besides the ‘Combuysen,’ or kitchens, where the cooking was done for the garrison...All these buildings had flat roofs in the Italian manner.
1948 H.V. Morton In Search of S. Afr. 285We have no Coffee! Let us go to the kombuis! Now that’s an interesting word! Seafaring Dutchmen turned their backs on the sea and became farmers, but they still called their kitchens by that word ‘Kombuis’ which is the ship’s galley of a Seventeenth Century East Indiaman.
1969 D. Child Yesterday’s Children 27At the back the two wings of the dwelling partially enclosed a paved courtyard. One wing contained the nurseries, and the other the dispens (pantry) and the kombuis (kitchen).
1980 A.J. Blignaut Dead End Rd 26I had told the four white men a few stories while I was seeing to their coffee in the kombuis.
1985 L. Sampson in Style Feb. 100I remember sitting beside the range in her kitchen. She still had one of those old kombuise.
1986 Argus 15 Feb.Pine refectory table, 10-seater witels kombuis-tafel with stinkwood legs, large Yellowwood Kombuis pestle and mortar.
1987 P. Sullivan in Living June 24The Ruperts’ dining room resembles a traditional kombuis..with quarry-tiled floor, yellow-wood table, stink-wood chairs, country dressers and an open hearth.
1990 Style May 40Leaning against the wall of his purple and orange kombuis in Rockey Street, Yeoville, he was an assimilated Afrikaner, a ‘South African’ rather than a Boer.
Used before the names of languages, as kombuis-Engels, kombuis-Hollands implying a pidgin variety of that language.
a form of Afrikaans considered non-standard;
A kitchen. Also attributive.
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18991990

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kombuistaal

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kombi, combi, nounn.komfoor, nounn.
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